Monday, September 14, 2009

OMG! Laundry!

In my parent's house, we had what we referred to as the laundry closet. What that really meant was that everyone's dirty clothes landed in the floor of the bathroom linen closet. You would often find my Mom sitting on the floor sorting whites, colors, denims, and linens into separate piles to be whisked off to the laundry room as the appliances became available for the next load. It was a short jaunt down the hall and around the kitchen into the laundry room, which also doubled as extra closet space. There were four closets in the whole house (including the linen closet) and five people (four of which were women). You do the math.

When Joshua and I moved into our first house, we utilized the same method, until I simply could not stand the possibility of digging into that pile of dirty cloths and finding a spider anymore. I bought four large laundry hampers and placed them in the laundry room. Then I bought several baskets. The hampers held the sorted dirty laundry, and each person in the house had a basket of clean laundry. It was glorious.

For a few months, anyway. Eventually, the system had to evolve again. I have learned that laundry is ever evolving...the family grows, kids learn how to put their own clothes away, kids learn to fold their own clothes and put them away (really? really and truly, will I be there someday?).

I have always said I would rather do laundry than any other house chore. I think I would like to retract that statement now. For various reasons, laundry is out of control for me these days. Cloth diapers, a haphazard potty trainer, two little girls who feel the need to change clothes if they splash the eensiest bit of water on themselves, a soccer playing boy (Shower and change into fresh clothes, Son, you stink!) husband's work clothes, husband's occasional play clothes, my clothes, the baby's two or three per day outfits (who is trying to learn to feed herself), the extra towels used to clean up spills...it's a never ending parade of smelly fabric at our house.

Oh, and one more teensy-weensy detail that is just barely worth mentioning...the appliances are on a different level of the house than our dirty laundry hampers and our closets and our dressers. Just a minor thing, really. That I will never willingly allow to happen to me again as long as I draw breath.

So now that you know all of that, let me tell you how my oldest daughter nearly got her dainty little self lobbed across the room the other night.

After being told to go put on her pajamas, she came back in only her underwear. 'I don't have any pajamas in my drawer.'

Our pat answer to this is to borrow from Thomas, who has somehow accumulated around 734 over sized-to-him t-shirts that we call pajamas.

To which Sarah Grace put her hands on her hips and replied, 'Well, Thomas' drawer is almost empty and then I won't have any pajamas!'

Joshua told her that Mommy worked very hard to keep up with our laundry and that the drawers would be refilled soon. (the man chooses to see the best in me, what can I say?)

Sarah Grace, not convinced of this, retorted, 'Well, she is taking a long time to do it.'

If there had been any sass or spitefulness in that child's voice, she would be going naked for a few days. As it stands, Sarah Grace is learning a lesson in gratefulness that her laundry is done for her and spending the day putting away a lot of clothes! And that is all I have to say about that!